Crews put out 4-alarm Burlingame fire

BURLINGAME (BCN) — Firefighters have extinguished a four-alarm fire that badly
damaged a residential and commercial building near downtown Burlingame and
displaced at least one person, a fire marshal said.

The blaze was reported in a two-story building in the 1200 block
of Donnelley Avenue, about half a block from the Burlingame Caltrain station,
at 3:49 a.m., according to Central County Fire Marshal Rocque Yballa.

The building housed a commercial office on the first floor and a
residential unit on the second floor.

Crews arrived on the scene to find the right side of the building
as well as its front porch fully engulfed in flames, Yballa said.

Nearly 70 firefighters were called to battled the four-alarm
blaze, which spread into the building’s attic and completely burned out the
inside, according to the fire marshal.

Crews were able to get the fire under control by 5:30 a.m., he
said.
A search of the property revealed that no one was at home at the
time of the fire, except for one man living in a detached unit behind the
main building who called to report the fire.

That man and possibly two other residents who weren’t home at the
time of the fire have been displaced.

Yballa said the fire appears to have started in the main
building’s living room area.

Yballa said investigators don’t know what caused the fire, but
said that the structure’s age and its wood-shingled siding likely contributed
to its rapid spread.

The main building, which the fire marshal estimated to date back
to the early 1900s, was built before automatic sprinklers were required, he
said.

“If these buildings had sprinklers, it would have been contained
to building of origin,” he said.

The fire marshal said there do not appear to be any signs that the
fire was intentionally set.